Now I will examine briefly the fallacy found in the Jockey win%; and again, this fallacy is not that it doesn’t produce some form of statistical increase in horse performance, but that the application of that information is utterly useless in finding overlays. The betting systems that advocate using Jockey win% are to countless to list, but the general concept is that if you look at the Jockey and their stats you can exclude horses that don’t have as good a chance of winning based on the win% of the Jockey riding it that day. Sounds good, but you must ask yourself the all important question: is horse investing about cashing more tickets or putting more money in your wallet?

Hopefully the answer will be making money and not necessarily cashing more tickets. Here is a brief example showing the problem with using Jockey win% in your handicapping arsenal (using the ML favorite).

ML Favorite: won at 32% overall.

Jockey win % - ML Favorite win%·

Now, it is obvious that when you get above the 15% mark the win% of the #1 ML favorite also increases. Thus, for example, if you were to bet the ML favorite when there is also a 25-35% jockey on the horse your overall win% will increase to 35-39% winners (opposed to the standard 32%). Thus, like the Bris Power Rating, one is able to increase win% by using the jockey factor – but does that put more money in your wallet? No! According to our research of every race from every major track for the last 5 years, If you bet on the same ML favorite with a 25% + jockey you would lose about 20% on your money (overall). Yet, if you bet on the ML favorite with a much worse jockey, 15% or less, you actually lose less money (in other words, your win% goes down but your ROI goes up). Thus, what does jockey % do? It does nothing for finding overlays, at least in this scenario. Why? Because everyone can see it and the odds these horses go off at are equally discounted and thus no value. If the goal is to cash tickets then the Jockey % will help, but if you want to make money after cashing those tickets (interestingly enough) you will have to go against the higher win% jockeys!